The China Dogs (43 page)

The President's heart sinks as the Canadian leader, Jacques Bastin, is put through to him.

“Mr. President, I call you to express the deep sympathies of the Canadian government, the Canadian people, and of course myself and my family.”

“Thank you.”

“It is terrible. We have watched it, of course, on the television, and it is unbelievable. I hope by now that the worst is over?”

“We are hoping so as well. The Army and National Guard are working with the police and sheriff departments, backed by multiagency support, and I'm sure normality will soon be resumed.”

“It is encouraging to hear that . . .” Bastin takes a diplomatic pause. “. . . but until that moment Canada feels it must close its borders to the United States.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There is concern here that your diseased animals may end up in Canada, and this cannot happen. So, until we are certain that you have mastered your difficulties, there will be no entry to anyone with an American passport, or any citizen other than a returning Canadian.”

“You're being ridiculous. You can't close five thousand miles of border.”

“Perhaps not, but we have to try. And with respect, protecting a population is not ridiculous; it is a governmental duty, and one you seem to be failing in. I wish you and your people well in tackling this menace.
Au revoir
.”

Molton throws the receiver at the phone cradle. America is becoming a world pariah and he's had enough.

160

Beijing

O
n a patch of grass in the courtyard of the city's famous ­garrison—the place that is the home of Wishu, the martial art better known to the western world as kung fu—a fight has broken out.

Soldiers gather around the two combatants and cheer them on.

It is a bloody and quick affair. An older warrior defeating a young upstart with a brutal flurry of blows.

General Zhang shows the crowd his triumphant fist and then licks blood off his knuckles.

The beaten young man lying in the dirt behind the guarded walls of the army camp knows better than to get up.

He needs to be a gracious loser.

This is how the monthly ritual goes. Zhang fights three recruits. One round apiece. The two men who do best receive privileges. The one who performs the worst is sentenced to a twenty-mile hike.

Zhang stages the fight for all manner of reasons. He believes it shows the men he is as tough as them. Is one of them. He thinks it creates an unassailable bond with grassroot soldiers. But more than that, it teaches them the art of war.

Dare they beat him?

Some are certainly fit and big and strong enough to do so.

But none ever have.

They are learning deception. How to lose when they could win. How to do it convincingly. How not to talk about it afterward, because those who deceive must never give away their true characters.

From far across the courtyard, in the shadow of a doorway, Minister Chunlin watches as the two bare-chested fighters bow to each other out of respect. Deception is on his mind as well. And what better place to see it played out?

Fresh blood steps forward. A young recruit named Luo Kai. He has a body hewn from granite and feet and hands the size of car wheels.

The two men take their respective stances in the sharp sunshine.

They shuffle left and right to find an opening, a chink in each other's tactical armor.

Kai's physical prowess seems nature's way of making up for his lack of intelligence. Every troop has its big dumb ox, and he is it.

Or at least that's what he wants them to believe.

Zhang doesn't even see the blow coming.

A front kick so hard and fast that it smashes his lips against his teeth and fills his mouth with blood.

His head throbs with rage.

Anger courses through every nerve and sinew as he tries to counter and attack.

Kai hits him with a pile-driving center punch, stiff-armed and loaded with enough raw power to drop the general flat on his back.

A huge grin fills his innocent face and he pumps a fist in the air.

There is no cheer, though. No noise at all from the crowd. All eyes are on the general as he gets to his knees and puts his hand to his face. He looks at the blood then wipes it on his chest and stands.

“Come on,” Zhang beckons his opponent with his left hand. “Is that the best you've got?”

Kai advances cautiously. He knows what to expect.

Zhang turns to the side, his bodyline a thin target, his foot ready to strike like the head of a cobra.

Then the crowd sees it.

The trailing left hand. The glint of steel. The flash of a blade.

Chunlin sees it too. And it makes him smile. It's what he expected. What he told Kai to expect. The young Goliath was pointed out to him years ago when the boy was first conscripted. Since then he's been one of the minister's protégés.

Zhang lunges, and the tip of the knife cuts across the man's muscled stomach.

There's a sound of shock from the crowd.

Kai doesn't even touch the blood. He knows now he has to get up close. Seize the knife and make what happens next look like an accident.

Zhang fakes a lunge with the knife, then wheels around and slams a kick into his opponent's side.

Kai counters by grabbing Zhang's ankle and rolling forward.

Zhang is thrown off balance.

For a second he is on his back and exposed.

Kai knows he should drop a knee on the knife arm. Break the wrist and see the fingers lose their grip on the steel.

He doesn't.

He misses. Misses by a fraction.

Zhang slices upward and cuts into his side.

Kai rolls away.

Cut twice, he's now bleeding heavily. He stands. Shakes his hand in surrender and bows his head.

Zhang throws his bloodied knife into the earth and goes to the beaten man. He raises Kai's hand in shared victory and the crowd roars.

The general turns so no one else can hear. “Get that stitched up then call my office. You have the makings of a true warrior. I could use a man like you.”

Chunlin is too far away to hear what is being said. But he knows enough to smile. Zhang is as inevitably drawn to brutal power as a moth is to a flame.

He will want time alone with Kai. The opportunity to talk man-to-man.

It will be an auspicious meeting, of that Chunlin is certain.

161

Situation Room, The White House, Washington DC

W
hen Molton reenters the room, the size of the group has been slimmed down to only members of the Security Council.

Video screens on the monitor wall are playing satellite footage of new dog attacks in New York. Paramedics and helivac teams are attending injured people out at Liberty Island.

The President glances at the feed as he sits back at the table. The monitors are so full of horror at the moment he can no longer spare the time to stop and stare. “Canada is closing its borders, that's what the call was. The biggest unguarded border in the world is about to get guarded.”

Pat Cornwell shakes his head on the link from Afghanistan. “Expect the Mexicans to follow suit. After all our efforts to keep
them
out, they're not going to be able to resist turning the tables.”

Molton looks to Jackson. “Carry on, Don. Before I stepped out of the room you mentioned progress. I'd really like to hear about progress.”

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Walton from the Florida task force has provided us with information that we're working fast on. He's discovered a link between a known Chinese operative, killer dogs in the Miami region, and the supply and distribution of drug-carrying microchips to a network of shelters across the U.S.”

Molton makes notes as he talks, a habit from his days out “on the stump” in Chicago. “What does Gonzalez say about all this?”

“He's confirmed the viability, Mr. President. We have some of the chips and they're in the labs being analyzed as we talk.”

Pat Cornwell asks the question everyone's thinking. “How do they get triggered?”

“They're a form of RFID—Radio Frequency ID—and they could be set off from anywhere in the world,” says Chris Parry almost dismissively. “The dogs' positions will show up on a computer map and an operator will simply type in a trigger command to a local relay that will use radio waves to set them off. Guys over at MIT have been developing an advanced system for humans with Alzheimer's or schizophrenia—they can remotely deliver more than twenty drugs through a chip and monitor patient response. Mercedes and Lexus have chips in cars that do diagnostics, they contact service centers and remotely tell owners when they're heading for a breakdown before the part fails. This dog stuff is simple, now that we know what it is.”

Molton looks exasperated. “If it's so simple, why didn't we get this before?”

“They'll have been running cryptographically altered rolling codes and CRA—challenge response authentication.”

No one answers.

Finally, the VP has a stab at it. “We have been chasing our tail. That's why. It's all happened so fast we've been struggling to set up response teams and not put enough resources into detection.”

Jackson feels affronted. “With respect, sir, that's not quite true. Since day one we've been working hard on the intelligence side and have made a significant breakthrough.”

Chris Parry takes his cue. “We have captured highly encrypted data running from North Korea to Beijing. It's called the Nian program. Nian is a mythical monster from Chinese folklore.

“Yesterday, pretty much around the time of the incident in the Korean DMZ, the firewalls momentarily came down. It was enough for us to prise open the door and pull a load of stuff out. We have decoded most of it. Normally, you would then be faced with recognizable characters and languages. We were not. We encountered Chinese characters—and to make matters worse, not the most commonly spoken version of Chinese. Linguists have now successfully determined that the inner code, as we call it, is written in Gan, or Jiangxinese, as it is often known. This is a language spoken by only about thirty million Chinese. We have found several experts and they are transcribing the data that we have, but there is a final complexity and perhaps the most awkward one of all. The data relates to advanced genetics and related formula. So we have had to draft in genetic scientists to work with the specialist translators to ensure everything is accurately translated and makes sense.”

Jackson adds a footnote. “Two leading Chinese scientists, Hao Weiwei and his son Jihai, were named as accessing that computer. Hao had administrator privileges to the database. We've pulled video showing tests on dogs. Experiments in which the dogs become aggressive and go crazy. Strange thing is, he seems to be using some kind of drugs to pacify them.”

“Or maybe make them worse,” adds Parry. “Until we break down the data we won't have a clear picture.”

“I think it's clear enough,” says Molton. “This amounts to proof that the Chinese and North Koreans colluded in the creation and control of weaponized dogs that have been set upon innocent American people. It's an act of war. And I don't need the Attorney General to tell me whether I have the right to strike back or not.”

“Right doesn't come into it,” says Cornwell. “The big problem is
might
not
right
. We launch a preemptive strike on China and North Korea, they both have the nuclear firepower to fight back and cause millions of deaths. Head-to-head with just China and we would be seriously outmuscled in a conflict. They have about two and a quarter million regular troops with the same again in reserve. We couldn't muster three million in total.”

“We wouldn't stand alone, Pat.” Molton sounds indignant. “The USA has some strong allies who would unhesitatingly stand with us.”

“China too.” Cornwell can't help but fight his point. “The North Koreans could put maybe nine million troops into the battlefield. Russia could add another two. That's a combined force against us of around fifteen million troops. And I haven't even gotten into the financial power of the likes of Russia and China. We are $14 trillion in debt, Clint, and we're in no position to go to war with those bankrolling us.”

Molton is annoyed by the outburst and the open challenge to his authority. “Well, thank God that Great Britain didn't do that kind of math when they declared war on Germany in 1939. Damn it, Pat, I'm not going to be bullied, and I suspect the American public feel the same way.” He turns to Jackson and Parry. “I'll go see Xian at this godforsaken APEC summit, but only to buy some breathing space. If you can't give me more than just hope, then by the time I come back you best prepare for war. For I sure as hell will go to Congress with that as my preferred option.”

162

Miami

T
he predawn light is charcoal gray when the military plane from Washington touches down in Miami. Ghost had called Jackson Memorial just before takeoff and he calls again as soon as he arrives.

The same female ward nurse tells him what she told him just over two hours ago. “There's no change in Miss Speed's condition, sir.”

No change.

He'd never thought that those two innocuous words could prove so painful.

Ghost drives straight home. Showers. Changes. Makes coffee and starts his computer. He double-clicks an icon he hasn't used in a long time and waits for it to load.

The trip to Washington taught him a lot. Much more than Jackson, Parry, Harries, and all the other spooks had expected him to learn. The big picture is still far from complete, but now he can see most of it and is kicking himself for taking so long to work out what is happening. China and the U.S. are apparently locked in some kind of secret war, and the President and his pals need it to stay secret, presumably until they win it. Meanwhile, innocent, unsuspecting people are being killed while the politicians posture and pontificate over their power plays.